A CAPE Town yachtsman and his cat Caspar were rescued from a watery grave by a Mitsui OSK Line car carrier after his 17m yacht was disabled in a storm in the South Atlantic recently. Bob Hayward (61) was sailing single-handed from the Caribbean to Cape Town when a storm disabled his mast and forced the yacht well off course.
The storm had blown me so far south there was now a very real danger that I was going to drift by well south of Cape Town, without the means of overcoming the current. I'd been at sea for 47 days without seeing a soul and was down to my last few days of food and water and very little diesel fuel, he told FTW.
That was when a giant Mitsui car carrier named Southern Ace appeared over the horison, on the South Africa leg of its Four Continents Express Service, and lifted yachtsman and cat to safety.
The car carrier Southern Ace was on a voyage from the United States to Durban to load a consignment of about 800 3-series BMW cars for the United States. Within a short time the rescue had been completed and the ship was continuing its interrupted voyage to Durban, where it arrived over the weekend on schedule.
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